Description

This petition from students at Howard University protests the "deplorable miscarriage of justice" in Haywood Patterson's 1933 trial in Decatur before Judge Horton. The petition includes seven pages with approximately 50 signatures on each page.

Description

The National Student League City College Evening Chapter at City College of New York protests the "outrageous procedure and decision" of the courts in the 1933 trials and calls for the removal of Judge Callahan and the Scottsboro Boys' immediate release.

Creator

National Student League (U.S.) City College Evening Chapter (New York, N.Y.)

Description

Sent by the Cosmopolitan Club of New York University after the 1933 Decatur trial presided over by Judge Horton, this resolution demands a change of venue to Birmingham, the release of the Scottsboro Boys, protection for them and their attorneys from lynching, and Negro and white worker representation on future juries. This resolution specifically mentions Haywood Patterson and attributes the outcome of his March 1933 trial to "bigotry, racial hatred, and prejudice." It is one in a large group of protest resolutions in this period with similar demands.

Transcription

Your Excellency:
The members of the National Student
League and its guests, assembled in
Mandel Hall on the University of Chicago
campus, unite in protest against the
verdict of guilty entered against Heywood
Patterson in Decatur, Alabama.

It is for you, Governor Miller, to
act to exercise your executive power to
free the nine innocent Scottsboro boys.

Subject

Description

Luke Osburn asks Governor Miller to use his influence to give the Scottsboro Boys a just trial. He writes that he does not criticize the state of Alabama and he is not particularly interested in the Scottsboro Boys themselves, but he is especially concerned about the principle of a fair trial, namely "air-tight evidence" and a jury of peers.

Coverage

Transcription

The Governor of Alabama,
Baton Rouge, Alabama.
Dear SIR:
I should like to urge you to use you influence in
assuring to the Scottsboro Boys a just trial. I believe I
voice the sentiment of enlightened America when I ask this.
I have lived many years in the South and I love it. We are
not criticizing the State of Alabama, and we have no intense
interest in saving the lives of certain negros whom we have
never seen. But we are decidedly interested in the principle
of the thing. After a fair trial and air-tight evidence, we
shall have nothing more to say if they are executed. But we
do not wish America and the State of Alabama to be shamed by
the conviction of innocent people--or the conviction of even
guilty people without ^fair^ trial. It is that right of every human
being on earth to a fair trial before punishment that we will
fight for from this day on to the crack of doom.
This pleasant little matter of the jury.... I wonder
how a white man would like to be tried by a jury all Chinese, or
Mexicans, or Tasmanians, or Eskimos? How would a white man who
had raped a negress like to be tried by an all-black jury? Would
he have a chance of a fair trial?
I call myself a Southerner, but I tell the State of
Alabama this: If you convict the Scottsboro Boys on bad evidence
and with an all-white jury, it will be an everlasting stain on
your state and it will not be forgotten. (And by the way I am
not a negro but a white and a graduate of the Rice Institute
in Houston, Texas.Yours truly,
Luke Osburn

Subject

Description

S. Ralph Harlow writes to Governor Miller that he had hoped Chief Justice Anderson's report on the Scottsboro case might have changed the course of things, but is disappointed that their trial will still take place in Decatur, instead of Birmingham, where prejudice may take hold of the courtroom. He believes that men like Governor Miller, who are educated and hold positions of power, not the "poor and ignorant" workers, are ultimately responsible for decisions such as these. He adds that treatment in prison camps and on chain gangs is worse than Nazis' treatment of Jewish people.

Transcription

SMITH COLLEGE
NORTHAMPTON. MASSACHUSETTS
DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE

March 24th, 1933.

Governor Miller,
The Capitol of Alabama,
Birmingham, Alabama.

My dear Governor Miller:

When Chief Justice Anderson made his heroic
report in the Scottsboro case, a host of American citizens felt that
Alabama might be saved from a stigma which centuries cannot wipe out.

Unfortunately it looks now as though the spirit
of race prejudice and mob law will again flood into the court room and
a legal lynching take place. The reports of the statements made by
the prosecution make countless American men and women who have
sympathy for that heroic band of Southern white men and women who have
been struggling to establish justice in place of injustice in the
Southern courts, seriously afraid that the spirit in which this trial
is about to be conducted is not one in which calm judgment will be
present, but, rather, hot and cruel blind emotion.

Had the trial been held in Birmingham I feel
that there might have been hope. Decatur has a record already stained
with mob violence. Its population is composed of the rural element,
uneducated and obsessed with a prejudiced for which they are not to
blame for they drank it with their mother's milk. Having lived in
the South, counting many of your outstanding leaders both of the white
and Negro race, among my friends, I know of what I write. But, you, Sir,
and the men of your class, know these things too, and the real responsi-
bility lies not with the poor and ignorant farmer and cotten grower,
but with the educated and enlightened men and women who hold high
positions of authority. If there is mob violence and the mob spirit
in the court room at Decatur the guilt lies with men like yourself,
who, for fear or favor, suffer such things to be.

Already in the minds of countless of your
fellow citizens and a larger hosts in the great nations outside our
land the state of Alabama has suffered great and lasting shame. The
treatment of the boys during these long months of imprisonment has
caused those of us who know to blush for America. The Nazi treatment
of the Jew is less harsh and cruel than what is being endured in
many any American prison camp and on many a chain gang. To the men who
have the courage and the fairness to help right these great wrongs
may not come popular acclaim among their own community, but men and
women who love justice will acclaim them and the future will enshrine
their names as pioneers of the better day.
Respectfully yours,
S. Ralph Harlow
S. Ralph Harlow
Professor, Smith College

Subject

Description

Tuskegee Institute president Robert R. Moton writes to the Governor of Alabama on the school's letterhead, applauding the orderly punishment of crime, but stating that he hopes the courts will be equally just with African Americans as with whites.

Creator

Source

Date

1931-04-14

Format

Letter

Language

English

Coverage

United States--Alabama--Tuskegee

Transcription

TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, ALABAMA
ROBERT R. MOTON

April 14, 1931.

Dear Governor:

I am writing to thank you for the promptness
and effectiveness of your action looking toward
the prevention of a horrible tragedy at Scottsboro
which, I am sure, had it transpired, would have
shocked the moral sense of the whole country, and
placed a stigma on out great state, wholly unde-
served for law and order which has been maintained
now for many years by her citizens.

The prompt and orderly process of punishing
crime meets with the hearty approval of all wor-
thy citizens in both races; but the end of the
law is justice and I am confident that in this
case you will see that such protection as the
courts can give will be meted out to the humblest,
the poorest - yes, and the blackest member of our
commonwealth.
Very sincerely yours,
R.R. Moton